pretty pretty princess
by EchoMoonHuntress
Summary: oh honey, you don't live in a fairytale. -Glimmer.


**Pretty pretty princess**

_oh honey, you don't live in a fairytale._

* * *

**.**

**(fairytales begin with once upon a time)**

**.**

Her dress isn't a floaty, twirly, bubblegum-pink princess gown.

Instead, it's a sexy, long, slinky, golden, see-through dress.

She looks more like a model than a princess in _that_ dress, but Glimmer _feels_ like a princess. She's far from the part, of course—princesses would be more modest in a dress like that.

Princesses also wouldn't be heading into a game where you murder everyone, but Glimmer pushes that aside.

She's writing a different type of fairytale, one where the princess is thrown in a world of murder and betrayal, traitors and backstabbers, and the princess doesn't rely on any prince to save her. She has to save herself.

"The Games aren't a fairytale," Cashmere had said to her sarcastically during training. "If you survive, you are the heroine of your own story."

Glimmer is still bothered by Cashmere's word of _if. _Cashmere should be saying _when, _not _if_. That unwritten story will be Glimmer's twisted fairytale, she is sure of it.

**.**

**.**

She is a huntress now, preying on weaker tributes, victims, commoners.

Glimmer spots the silver bow, gleaming on top of a pile of other weapons, and makes that _her_ target, running across the blood-slicked grass, picking up a dagger along the way.

The boy from District 5 reaches it at the same time she does, and she whips out the dagger and plunges the blade deep into his heart. His body slips to the ground with a thud, she pulls out the (now red) dagger, and she encircles the sheath, grasping the bow.

She pauses for a second, and then laughs. Princesses were never thrown in a room to murder each other. This was almost absurd, strange, for a fairytale.

Well, she supposes, it's her fairytale. She writes the rules, both in her fairytale and in this Hunger Games.

Marvel nears her, throwing his spear into the girl from District 9. "You look like a hunter," he muses.

She grins slightly at him. "Aren't I one?"

He laughs and slashes at a tribute's leg. "You're not good with a bow," he says. "And you acted like a ditz on interview night."

"I'm not a ditz," she snaps. Marvel opens his mouth to respond, but a blur of orange jumps him and knocks him on his back. He wraps his hand around the tribute, but she is quicker, freeing herself from his grasp, and raises her knife-

-and then coughs up blood and falls to her side.

A silver arrow is visible in her back, off to the side. Glimmer is still surprised she hit her. It is the first time she has ever hit her target.

Marvel straightens, wipes blood off his mouth, and glares at her. She tilts her head at him, forgetting that she is in the Hunger Games, forgetting she is in the middle of the Cornucopia, forgetting that she could be potentially murdered.

(The odds of that happening, however, are slim. Nobody would dare kill her, a Career, a high ranking tribute).

"Still a ditz?" she asks, almost tauntingly.

She whirls around and runs back into the Cornucopia, feeling untouchable, high and proud.

**.**

**.**

Her eyes are green, and so is the color of jealousy.

She studies Katniss Everdeen, the _famous_ Girl on Fire, up in a tree. She can't believe that _this_ pitiful girl got an 11—what the hell did she do to get it? Light herself on fire with matches? _Katniss_ shouldn't have gotten that 11, that filthy commoner. Glimmer should've gotten it—she's better than Katniss, after all.

"Shoot her, Glimmer," Marvel says, his mouth set in a firm line.

She aims her bow up at her and fires, but the arrow misses its target by a considerable feat. Katniss reaches over, and the silver arrow becomes a blur as she waves it around in the air.

Glimmer's face flushes bright red. How _dare_ she mock her like that, like she was a disgrace, a failure! How dare Katniss taunt her, smiling sweetly at her as though they were _friends_ playing a game!

She has never felt such an urge to kill somebody. Something that feels like hatred and (strangely enough) envy courses through her. She pushes the envy away—she shouldn't feel envious of a girl from District _12_. No matter what the scores said, Glimmer was still a Career, and Katniss a weak and pitiful tribute.

Katniss is still a low-ranked commoner, Glimmer is still an untouchable princess who could easily kill Katniss just like that.

**.**

**.**

Maybe she couldn't.

Glimmer screams for her allies (_"Cato! Clove! Marvel!"_) but none of them return. She is stuck with the District 4 girl (Glimmer never bothered to learn her name, she had been the weakest out of the group), who collapses on the ground.

She finds herself crumpling to the ground as well, her eyes suddenly facing upwards, at the blue, blue sky. The sky shatters, sharp pieces raining on top of her, and then tracker jackers swoop in front of her, dancing around in front of her, screaming _get up get up get up you stupid girl get up!_

She can't. Her limbs won't move.

And suddenly, all she can see is just white, clear and crystallized, like a mirror. She can see her reflection, and what stares back is most certainly _not_ her.

Her face is lumpy, swollen with tracker jacker stings, her green eyes seem to be _leaking_, and her hair is matted, gnarled and uncombed.

She doesn't look like a princess anymore, she supposes. She looks more like…a witch.

Maybe that's what she's always been, deep down under. Never the princess, but the witch.

**.**

**.**

Knives cut her open, her flesh is being torn apart, she is drowning—the torture never ends.

She doesn't exactly know what's killing her and what's not—she just knows that she's dying.

Her body spasms and she wants to throw up, but she can't. The poison has immobilized her.

She wonders how long her death will be. She just wants it to end—death is the best option.

Glimmer remembers, once upon a time, when she was a pretty princess on interview night, confident and sure she would win, so _sure_ that she would win and become a permanent princess, a beautiful royal in the Capitol. That feels like forever ago.

She remembers when she was writing the fairytale, controlling what was going to happen. She realizes now you can't write your own fairytale.

Her body convulses once more, and she screams.

**.**

**(this twisted fairytale is over)**

**.**


End file.
